Browsing by Author "Dewulf, A."

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Constructing common ground and re-creating differences between professional and indigenous communities in the Andes
(2004-09) Craps, Marc; Dewulf, A.; Mancero, Mónica; Santos Jara, Enrique Antonio; Bouwen, René
Multi-actor initiatives aiming at environmental sustainability and social equity, face complex tensions between institutionalized decision-makers, backed up by expert knowledge, and communities with locally embedded knowledge and interests. Despite the importance given to community participation, successful experiences are limited in number, scope and duration. Experts are confronted with the paradox that they exclude local communities with the strategies and languages they use to include them. This study is based on the long-term experiences of the authors with a multi-actor initiative in Southern Ecuador on sustainable rural drinking water management. They were involved as actionresearchers, facilitating multiparty interactions and supporting reflective practice among the participants. The article shows how multiparty processes construct identities, workforms, structures and activities that cross the boundaries between communities of expert and indigenous practice, even in the exceptionally unequal conditions of the Andes, where inequalities between these communities are deeply rooted in history. Such transitions were taken as opportunities to look for common ground between different communities-of-practice whilst, at the same time, contradictions could come to the fore. As inequalities tend to be confirmed through interactions, not only inside but also outside the multi-actor initiative, they cannot be resolved definitively by a multiparty project. Under those circumstances a social constructionist approach, calling the attention to the constructed nature of mutual perceptions and relationships, was highly inspiring for the authors-facilitators to keep the reflection and dialogue among the participants in the process going-on.
Fragmentation and connection of frames in collaborative water governance: A case study of river catchment management in Southern Ecuador
(2011-06-01) Dewulf, A.; Mancero, Mónica; Cárdenas, G.; Sucozhanay, D.
In collaborative water governance, the variety of frames that actors bring to the discussion constitutes an important challenge. In this study, we analyse the fragmentation and connection of frames in collaborative water governance projects in the Paute catchment and its sub-catchment Tabacay in the Southern Andes of Ecuador. We rely on frame analysis of project documents, interviews and meeting recordings to analyse the initial stages of these projects. We discuss (1) the different roles of problem domain framing and issue framing in frame fragmentation; (2) the significance of scale framing to problem domain and issue framing; (3) the challenge of connecting expert frames with frames of other actors; and (4) the importance of face-to-face dialogue for connecting frames. Points for practitioners Professionals in public management and administration all over the world are increasingly involved in governance processes where they have to deal with a multitude of actors and perspectives. If their task involves setting up collaborative projects with other governmental agencies, civil society organizations and/or business actors, there is much to gain by paying close attention to how they themselves and other actors are framing both the problem domain and the issues involved. In processes of collaborative water governance, additional attention is required for how projects are framed with respect to water system scales and administrative scales, and for how technical framing of the issues connects to the frames and experiences of other actors.
Uncertainties in climate change projections and regional downscaling in the tropical Andes: Implications for water resources management
(2010-07-15) Buytaert, Wouter; Vuille, M.; Dewulf, A.; Urrutia, R.; Karmalkar, Ambarish; Célleri, Rolando
Climate change is expected to have a large impact on water resources worldwide. A major problem in assessing the potential impact of a changing climate on these resources is the difference in spatial scale between available climate change projections and water resources management. Regional climate models (RCMs) are often used for the spatial disaggregation of the outputs of global circulation models. However, RCMs are time-intensive to run and typically only a small number of model runs is available for a certain region of interest. This paper investigates the value of the improved representation of local climate processes by a regional climate model for water resources management in the tropical Andes of Ecuador. This region has a complex hydrology and its water resources are under pressure. Compared to the IPCC AR4 model ensemble, the regional climate model PRECIS does indeed capture local gradients better than global models, but locally the model is prone to large discrepancies between observed and modelled precipitation. It is concluded that a further increase in resolution is necessary to represent local gradients properly. Furthermore, to assess the uncertainty in downscaling, an ensemble of regional climate models should be implemented. Finally, translating the climate variables to streamflow using a hydrological model constitutes a smaller but not negligible source of uncertainty.